Oftentimes the members of a family have their own personal cellular telephones, as well as a shared landline telephone receiver which they keep at home. For example, a wife can have her own Nokia™ cellular telephone and, similarly, a husband can have a Blackberry™ cellular telephone. Over time, the wife can become accustomed to the features provided by her telephone receiver. And the husband, too, can become used to the layout of the user interface on his Blackberry™.
Operating system virtualization makes it possible to run the operating systems of both the Nokia™ and Blackberry™ on the landline receiver at the same time. Virtualization is a technology which allows devices, such as telephone receivers, to execute multiple operating systems concurrently. Thus, when a telephone receiver uses operating system virtualization to execute both the Nokia™ and the Blackberry™ operating systems concurrently, it can provide users with both the Nokia™ and Blackberry™ user interfaces at the same time.
Moreover, a user can transfer the data content (e.g. operating system files, telephony application files, contacts list files, executable files, data files, etc.) of his or her cellular phone to a landline telephone receiver and execute the transferred software on the landline receiver. For example, the wife can copy the data content of her Nokia™ cellular telephone to the landline receiver. This will enable the wife to set the Nokia™ operating system as the active software environment on the landline receiver and enjoy the same telephony applications and user interfaces with which she interacts on her cellular telephone. When the landline receiver provides virtualization, the husband, too, can transfer the data content of his Blackberry™ to the landline receiver and enjoy the Blackberry™ user interface accordingly.
When the Nokia™ operating system is the active software environment running on the landline receiver, the Nokia™ user interface will be visible on the terminal's display. And, alternatively, when the Blackberry™ operating system is the active software environment, the Blackberry™ user interface will be visible on the terminal's display. Stated succinctly, when an operating system instance is set as the “active software environment” of a telecommunications terminal, the interfaces of the operating system instance and/or one or more of the applications that execute within the operating system instance's memory space are displayed on the display screen of the terminal. In other words, for the purposes of this specification, “active software environment” is defined as:                (i) a system software instance whose user interface is visible on the display screen of a terminal; or        (ii) a system software instance that is executing a software application whose interface is visible on the display screen of a terminal; or        (iii) any combination of i and ii.        